Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil

On February 22, 1895, a naval force laid siege to Brass, the chief city of the Ijo people of Nembe in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. After severe fighting, the city was razed. More than two thousand people perished in the attack.

A hundred years later, the world was shocked by the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa—writer, political activist, and leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. Again the people of Nembe were locked in a grim life-and-death struggle to safeguard their livelihood fro...